Church of England: Memorialize Occupy Who Vandalized St. Paul’s Cathedral

Attitudes towards protesters show depth of our moral vacuity

WHEN Time magazine proclaimed that 2011 was the year of the protester, it lent its prestige to the recently constructed prejudice that believes a loss of moral and cultural purpose can be recovered through the actions of people on the streets.

Communities have always honoured those who made sacrifices to help others. Throughout history, acts of outstanding heroism and duty served as moral exemplars for others. In very rare instances, such deeds have been represented as saintly and memorialised by generations to come.

Today, little is required of potential moral role models. All that is asked is that they complain, voice their emotion and make a public statement.

The occupiers of St Paul's Cathedral were still eating their Christmas pudding when Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, the third most senior cleric in the Church of England, told them their deed should be memorialised and turned into a spiritual legacy for the future.

"We are looking for ways of honouring what has been said when the camp moves on," he said. One suggestion is to erect a tent in the church itself so that worshippers could come together and discuss how to make the world a better place.

Usually, rendering an experience sacred does not occur while it is unfolding. Such haste in pronouncing an act worthy of memorialisation betrays a loss of historical time. There is also something tawdry about a senior cleric promising a group of would-be saints that their acts would soon be honoured by Britain's national church.

It is worth recalling that St Paul's has traditionally served as the site of state funerals of British military leaders, including the Duke of Wellington, Horatio Nelson and the wartime prime minster, Winston Churchill. This is a church where those who have made an outstanding contribution to the life of the nation are celebrated and laid to rest. St Paul's contains the tombs of such distinguished figures as the architect Christopher Wren, the scientist Alexander Fleming and the sculptor Henry Moore.

One does not need to be a worshipper of great individuals to find repulsive the suggestion that the current occupation should be sanctified as a national legacy for future generations. So what has driven senior church leaders and politicians to represent this year's acts of protest as possessing such elevated moral authority? And why is it that political figures across the ideological divide find it difficult to question or criticise the groups of demonstrators that occupy urban spaces in many parts of the Western world?

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